I could not be more disappointed in Governor Branstad. He is the ultimate political animal. Every word out of his mouth is a campaign sound bite. Governor, the campaign is over. It is time to govern.

I don’t how the Governor slept last night after vetoing a bi-partisan tax cut that would have helped 240,000 working Iowa families making less than $45,000 a year. He is thumbing his nose at middle-class Iowans struggling to recover from the national recession.

The Governor is sending a clear message that he will only support tax cuts that give away millions of Iowans’ hard-earned money to out-of-state corporations and the richest handful of Iowans.

In his veto message, Governor Branstad says “…it is my desire to approach tax policy in a comprehensive and holistic manner.” 

This excuse doesn’t hold water. The Governor has already signed a tax cut for Iowa’s wealthiest citizens, one worth almost exactly as much to them as what the working families tax cut would have provided to a quarter of a million Iowans.

With only one week to go there are a bunch of really bad policy ideas still alive. I wrote about some of them a couple of weeks ago. They include legislation (HF 657) that interferes with a woman’s right to make her own reproductive health care decisions, a bill (SF 500) that would transfer our already challenged clean water programs from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources to the Department of Agriculture,  legislation (HF 431) that would prevent whistle blowers from videotaping animal abuse and legislation setting the stage for a nuclear power plant (SF 390).

It is going to be a stressful week. I am opposed to moving any of these bills forward and will be working to STOP them all.

We also have a big battle ahead on education funding. The Senate passed the education appropriation bill this week in committee. It restores public university and community college funding. We have a lot of work to do to defend this support in the final negotiations.

This week, we debated a controversial gambling bill on the floor of the Senate, SF 526. This bill would revise Iowa’s casino referendum laws, allow advance deposit wagering on horse races, and revise purses for horse racing. It would also require the Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission to produce a study on the regulation and societal impacts of Internet poker by December 1st. I voted no.

We will be doing a lot of debating this coming week. You can listen from your computer at the Legislature’s website.